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At IDF 2013, Intel has finally fully unveiled Bay Trail, the tablet SoC that replaces Clover Trail. Bay Trail will come to Android and Windows 8.1 tablets this fall, and the initial benchmarks (carried out by third parties) look very strong indeed. CPU-wise, Bay Trail outperforms the entire ARM stable, including Cortex-A15 and Qualcomm’s latest efforts, and on par with AMD’s Jaguar-based Kabini, while consuming much less power. GPU-wise, Bay Trail is more middle of the road, with benchmark scores that compare to the iPad 4, but falling behind Tegra 4 and Snapdragon 800 by some margin (20%+). Overall, Intel seems to have finally produced an Atom part that can compete in both terms of power consumption and performance. The big question now is whether Bay Trail can secure a big product win: After all, without a beautiful and desirable product that can compete with the iPad and Nexus, Bay Trail doesn’t stand a chance.

Bay Trail, at its most basic, is a brand new mobile SoC with up to four Silvermont CPU cores (no Hyper-Threading) and the HD 4000 graphics found in Ivy Bridge. Silvermont is a new out-of-order CPU architecture that’s around three times faster than its predecessor, Saltwell. In Bay Trail, rather than the 16 cores found in Ivy Bridge’s HD 4000 GPU, you only get four — a significant and massively needed boost from the single-core PowerVR SGX GPU in Clover Trail, but by no means game-changing. These cores are DirectX 11 and Open GL ES 3.0 compatible. The GPU basically means that Bay Trail can run Android and Windows 8.1 and tablet-oriented games without issue, but it won’t be playing Crysis any time soon. The CPU operates at speeds of between 1.3 and 1.5GHz (stock) and 2.4GHz (Turbo), and the GPU can clock up to 688MHz.

In addition to the new CPU and GPU, Bay Trail has dedicated hardware for video encode (H.264, MPEG-2) and decode (H.264, VP8, MPEG-2, etc.), and on the dual-channel models (Atom part numbers without the “D” designation) you get a heady 17.1GB/sec memory bandwidth to LPDDR3 RAM. Dual-channel models will be capable of resolutions up to 2560×1600, while lower-end models will only support 1920×1200 and lower. On the storage side of things, SDIO, SD card, and eMMC are supported, while for expansion USB 3.0 is supported.

Bay Trail performance

Without a doubt, the most important factors that will dictate whether Bay Trail stands a chance of success are performance and power consumption. Where Medfield and Clover Trail earnt Intel a space at the table, forcing device makers to take the chip giant seriously, Bay Trail needs to actually be as good as or better than the latest ultra-mobile chips from Qualcomm, Samsung, and AMD.

Benchmarks from sites such as Anandtech and PC Mag paint a very rosy picture for Bay Trail’s CPU, which is best-in-class amongst other ultra-mobile chips, but the GPU is middle-of-the-pack. The chart below gives you a good idea of Silvermont’s impressive performance under Windows:

Managing half the score of an Ivy Bridge CPU is really quite impressive. In single-threaded integer workloads the difference is even smaller.

But GPU-wise, though the HD 4000-derived core is more than four times faster than Clover Trail, it’s still slower than AMD’s Brazos. As Anandtech notes, though, this mid-range performance is enough that Bay Trail can run Team Fortress 2 at 1366×768 under Windows 8.1.

On the Android side of the equation, Intel’s Bay Trail FFRD (form factor reference design) stomps all over the Nvidia Shield (Tegra 4/Cortex-A15) and the Nexus 10 (Snapdragon 800) in almost every test imaginable — and once some bugs are ironed out in Intel’s build of Android 4.2.2, Bay Trail’s dominance should be cemented.

For the GPU, Bay Trail is slightly ahead of Snapdragon 600 (Adreno 320), but a good 30% behind the Snapdragon 800 (Adreno 330) and Tegra 4. Bay Trail’s GPU should be more than good enough for current Android apps and games — but it’s certainly not best-in-class.

Tagged In

Just to confirm how much the fake next-gen consoles XBoxOne and Playstation4 clearly suck. Slow as hell.

Jamie MacDonald

How is that relevant to this at all? I mean, other than that the consoles also have a processor, that’s where the similarities end.

Not defending the consoles – I’m not buying one any time soon, but why bring that up?

Joel Detrow

Because he drinks too much hard haterade.

Phobos

maybe he needs to layoff the pot

jaen

just as Thelma responded I’m taken by surprise that a stay at home mom can get paid $9815 in four weeks on the computer. More Info

w­w­w.Y­A­D­7.c­o­m

rondriggs10k

One new series of Android tablets to launch this week are powered by Intel’s recently released Z2580 Clover Trail processor – which offers impressive performance for mid-range devices.

Ramos Technology is one of the better-known China based tablet manufacturers and has teamed-up with Intel to introduce the I-Series with 8″, 9″ and 10″ Android models (starting at $199)…. with very competitive pricing and solid features, including high resolution displays.

Intel’s processor with Hyper-Threading technology runs four threads simultaneously and scores extremely well in benchmark testing, as compared to other mainstream Quad-core tablets.

The i9 is the first of the series available this week and offers an 8.9-Inch model – which features a 1900×1200 display with Samsung advanced PLS technology.

One of the first sources in the U.S. to feature the new Ramos I-Series, and for complete details — go to– Tab l e t S p r i n t

Niels

You do know that the Nexus 10 came out a few month before the announcement of the Snapdragon x00 series (200/400/600/800)? The first devices with a Snapdragon 800 are also just coming out (read: between here and two months ago)

I wanted to point out that the Nexus 10 runs on a Dual-Core Exynos A15, not a Snapdragon 800 that was yet to be announced at that point.

Dozerman

What do you mean “I don’t know”? It’s an ARM chip.

Niels

It means exactly that. I haven’t seen any desktop sporting a Snapdragon 800 yet.
It’s not because it ‘could’ run a full-blown Linux (or windows) that the system would be usable.

earthzero

You’re being purposefully obtuse. You know that he means full blown Windows (or even Mac OS) applications that 95% of computer users would run. Not Linux compatible desktop applications. Please, let’s get real here. Unless specifically compiled for ARM the answer is clearly NO.

Niels

I wasn’t, sir. I truthfully didn’t know. I did know he meant fulll blown Windows or Mac OS applications, but I’m not that familiar with the capabilities of ARM architectures as I’m relatively new to this. I just follow Android and the devices it runs on, that’s why I posted that the Nexus 10 doesn’t run on a Snapdragon 800.

Edit: But thank you for clearing this up.

Anders CT

You can certainly run desktop applications on a Snapdragon 800 or other top ARM chips. Very well.

meddle0ne

These new Bay Trail Windows 8 devices are going to be incredibly popular. From tablets, to laptops, to desktops. These results are better than I expected. The ability to finally add a decent about or RAM will make all the difference for the average user.

Phobos

and the $$?

deppman

This is complete bs:

“On the Android side of the equation, Intel’s Bay Trail FFRD (form factor reference design) stomps all over the Nvidia Shield (Tegra 4/Cortex-A15) and the Nexus 10 (Snapdragon 800) in almost every test imaginable”

First, on geekbench the production T4 at 1.9 ghz slightly beats the Intel part pushed to 2.4ghz (e.g 25% above its standard clock). And the T4 stomps all over the Intel part in the graphics department. The T4 also wins in sunspider performance tests by about 15%.

Second, the nexus 10 does not use an S800 proc but instead a Samsung dual core a15. Are you trying to look inept? It is working.

Lessons of the day? 1. Fact check, and 2. A real journalist keeps his irrational fanboy musings to himself.

tgrech

I doubt the Windows tablets will ever be popular, they will always be slower in terms of performance/price, it’s simply impossible for that to change.
Bay Trail could take off on Android, but it’ll be faced with fierce competition. Considering ARM parts are so much cheaper to produce and sell(By a factor of x10+ last time I checked), I believe price will again be the main problem holding the parts back from major success. The average consumer doesn’t care if the CPU is a little slower in certain workloads(And probably have no easy way to find out) if the device is much cheaper and still made by a reputable brand(Since that’s the main thing “average” consumers seem to look for).

Richard Diaz

Why whenever people talk about the TDP or power consumption, with Intel they say “6-7W TDP” is “just fine for a tablet form factor”. But when it comes to AMD’s Temash APU 5-8W TDP is to high for tablets, and even Nvidia’s Tegra 4 doing I think as high as 4.5W TDP they say that’s still a little to high! But if its Intel its fine because they only measure by the CPU’s power consumption while everyone else uses the entire SoC’s TDP.

Robert Collins

Intel went from the bottom of last gen to a close 2nd place in the current gen. Considering that Intel is printing 22nm chips vs 28nm competition. They get a built in 22% cost advantage and either a 15% lower power advantage or 25% performance lead. Intel wouldn’t be spending 11 billion to increase in production capacity by 20% this year if they didn’t have products to make.

Vasim Tamboli

Nice post…!!!

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